Lisa: A ball and a glove together cost $10. If the glove costs $9 more than the ball, how much is the ball? Elliot got this right immediately while I got it wrong and couldn't figure out why for like 5 minutes!

I’m sure I’m very naïve in many ways of my own, but this letter to editor (link) struck me as a profound misapprehension of how our political system functions:

To the editor:

In an earlier letter to the editor I suggested that the voters needed to use their votes to overthrow the American government much like the military coups are doing in third world nations. The question is, "What would that look like?"

We need to find someone who would be willing to give 4 to 8 years of their life to go to Washington either as a senator or representative. If we could get 25 to 30 such people throughout the United States we would be able to initiate reform by forcing the Republican and Democratic parties to sit down and negotiate real reform instead of bickering. Four to six senators and 8 to 15 representatives are enough to insist on reform.

How do we elect these people? We get their friends and relatives to support them by signing petitions so they are eligible to run for office. If I get 10 people to support a candidate and they each get 10 people it would not take much work to get this done. These people would belong to a truly "independent" party whose platform would be to force compromises to lower our national debt, get senatorial benefits in line with those of the working class and create a climate that would produce new jobs for the unemployed.

What if the professional congresspeople try to "hold up" this progress? Our independent party senators and representatives send out e-mails to the media and constituents describing the "pork barrel" or other special interest garbage that is causing our current problems. At the next election we, the voters, can get rid of the non-performing politicians.